My heart bleeds for the lawyers

Tweet The Secretary of State set out in some detail last week his reasons for pessimism about achieving agreement on the proposed Wales Bill.  No surprise at all that the fault for this is being placed squarely on the Labour Party’s reluctance to submissively sign up to exactly what the Tories offer rather than on any reluctance by his own government to negotiate seriously, or even honour the promises that they’ve made before.

His real objection to establishing a legal jurisdiction for Wales is probably based on his previous statements that he will do nothing which might conceivable make it easier for Wales to become independent, at some distant future point, if Wales ever had a political party arguing for such a step to be taken. 

But one of the reasons he gives is even sillier – it seems to boil down to a few lawyers from Wales who’ve had a successful career in London feeling that lawyers might not do so well for themselves working solely in Wales.  I suspect that it is probably true – but I also suspect that the career prospects for lawyers are not the top reason which many people would put forward as a basis for deciding how Wales should be run.

The reality is obvious

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There are one or two well-used phrases which trip from politicians’ lips when they want to avoid providing any evidence in support of their views.  One of my least favourites is the phrase “The reality is…”.  Long experience tells me that it’s invariably followed by unsubstantiated personal opinion presented as incontrovertible fact.

Cheryl Gillan came out with another one yesterday.  The fact that she’s opposing the creation of a Welsh legal jurisdiction hardly qualifies as news, for all the prominence given to it.  Her reference to the devolution process as a “never- ending conveyor belt of powers transferring from Westminster to Cardiff” was at least a new sound bite – better than the more usual “slippery slope” argument.  But sound bites, however good, do not an argument make.

Indeed, making any sort of argument for the status quo was something that seemed to be distinctly lacking in her comments.  Instead, she reverted to another of those politicians’ phrases; it was, she said, “glaringly obvious” that it was a bad idea.

There we are, argument won in two words, with no need to bother with any little matters such as substance or evidence.  In truth of course, what ‘the reality is’ and what is or isn’t ‘glaringly obvious’ will vary according to perspective.  There’s more to political debate than sophistry.